There's something about a monolithic system that deadens the brains of the apparatchiks inside the system, as if they're never asked to think, much less question. What's required of them to have success instead is to accept and obey.
No one among their ranks questions the system and the products of the system. When someone outside the system questions it, or them, they're not sure how to behave. Real debate? They've not been prepared for the possibility. Told everything, they've not been told about that. To hear criticism of the conformist bureaucratic system is an unfamiliar experience. It's not done and as far as they know has never been done.
Attempting, then, to engage the questioner would be a step too far, of which they're not capable.
The irony is that the blindly following system people have positions at universities, which are supposed to be bastions of free thought and opposing ideas, the clash of ideas, but represent instead conformity and monothink.
Or: Free American literature! Buy American Pop Lit books.
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Amen. I've spent too much time in universities and they make me feel sick.
I believe that organizations like the lit establishment self-select members who are very good at cognitive dissonance. If they don't see hypocrisy, then they don't have to pretend they don't see it. Makes work easier.
There is more going on here though. At some level they must see the weaknesses in their own dogma, because they distance themselves from non-believers at the earliest moment- at the first whiff of dissent. Sort of like a sixth-sense for non-conformity. I frighten myself thinking about this stuff.
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